Global warming alarmists try to exploit the Sandy tragedy

“The terrifying truth is that America faces a future full of Frankenstorms. Climate change raises sea levels and supersizes storms. The threat of killer winds and crushing storm surges will grow by the year unless we get serious about tackling greenhouse gas pollution."

Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity

Martin Taylor, writing in Forbes, points out how global warming alarmists - like Shaye Wolf - are trying to use the Sandy tragedy for their own political causes:

Leave it to global warming alarmists to exploit the innocent victims of a human tragedy like Hurricane Sandy to spread the laughably false notion that global warming caused the storm. While our nation should be coming together to support the victims and repair the damage, far too many alarmists are cynically prostituting the tragedy under Rahm Emanuel’s theory of “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Shame on those alarmists for asserting a false connection to global warming to “make lemonade” out of this tragedy.

As Hurricane Sandy prepared to strike the Northeast, climate scientists from alarmist and skeptical camps alike reported the storm had little if anything to do with global warming. Martin Hoerling, who chairs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) climate variability research program, and who oversees NOAA’s Climate Scene Investigators, observed, “neither the frequency of tropical or extratropical cyclones over the North Atlantic are projected to appreciably change due to climate change, nor have there been indications of a change in their statistical behavior over this region in recent decades.”

Got that? Global warming models project no appreciable change in North Atlantic storm behavior, yet global warming alarmists now say global warming caused Hurricane Sandy.

Hoerling further explained, “In this case, the immediate cause is most likely little more that the coincidental alignment of a tropical storm with an extratropical storm. Both frequent the west Atlantic in October…nothing unusual with that. On rare occasions their timing is such as to result in an interaction which can lead to an extreme event along the eastern seaboard.”

So global warming models say global warming has little or no impact on North Atlantic storms and meteorologists report a convergence of natural factors that made Sandy especially powerful. To objective scientists not trying to sell global warming snake oil, this is yet another example of the very strong storms that always have – and always will – occur on our planet.

Scientists, moreover, report a striking decline in hurricane activity during recent years. National Hurricane Center data show a dramatic decline in major hurricanes striking the United States during the past half century (see my recent column on thishere). As the earth gradually recovers from the Little Ice Age (which lasted from approximately 1300 to 1900 A.D.), the frequency of major hurricane strikes is declining rather than increasing.

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